Hothead explains why it won’t be making a third Penny Arcade Adventures game

Hothead director of technology Joel DeYoung has said the reason there won’t be an thirds episode for Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness is because of not only the cost to make it, but all the work that would go into it as well.

Speaking with Eurogamer, DeYoung said Hothead doesn’t have much of a say in the matter either, as work on a third episode would be a decision made by the business end of things – not the developer’s.

“Well there’s a lot to say about that,” he said about the game’s initial creation. “Tycho [Jerry Holkins], he’s going to write everything – every word in the game. And then Mike was going to basically art direct it. He didn’t create any art assets, because he’s a 2D artist, but he concepted everything, every character.

“Tycho publicly acknowledged that he had no idea what the volume of work that would be required was. And we were working on those games in rapid succession. I think he really struggled to get the volume of text written for Episode 1, and then with Episode 2 coming out so quickly thereafter – it was five-and-a-half months. That was not worked on in parallel, and getting him to deliver that text was, er, frankly quite a struggle.”

DeYoung said the work required was sort of a “wake-up call” for the Penny Arcade creators, and since this was the first game they ever made, they were “understandably extremely picky about how their stuff was going to be portrayed”.

Earlier this week, DeYoung tweeted that another episode would be created if folks got “100,000” of their friends “to buy” Episode 1 and Episode 2. “Then we”ll make it” the tweet said.

DeYoung later pulled the tweet due to the fact it was “misplaced, to be frank”, and brought about by excitement over the game’s renewed popularity on the Mac App Store.

“I’ve had to say, sometimes you need to bring a couple of more million people to buy Episode 2 and we’ll have the resources to make economic sense to make Episode 3,” he added. “It’s a fad reality, right? The tweet may have come across as: we’ve set some number if it sells on the Mac App Store 100,000 units we’re going to make Episode Three. That actually is not the case.”

Penny Arcade said the reason there’s not going to another adventure was because Hothead was too busy creating both Deathspank games, and that basically too many fires in the oven would have made a third episode “would’ve suffered“.

So, does this mean there will or won’t be a third episode? According to DeYoung: “I have to leave the details of the deal to the business people; I’m not really striking a chord on that as to what the specifics are. That was a great title for us to work on as a company and we enjoyed doing it, but we’ve kind of moved on.”

Penny Arcade has said the game’s story will eventually be finished, but it will be posted on the Penny Arcade website.